Dull Boys and Mere Toys
by Aries Draco
Summary: ...so, what was up with Pilot anyway? As they breeze past third-base, Snippy wonders. Cross-posted from AO3. A piece exploring a possible relationship between a not quite alive host of an alien organism and a cyborg that thinks he is human. Contains non-graphic gore, some sexytimes throughout, wackiness and identity issues.
1. In which fingore appears suddenly

Stranger things have happened. And, like the many strange things he had encountered during his tortured lifetime, he wasn't exactly sure how he'd stumbled into this. A peculiar form of luck, perhaps? Engie had this theory about Captain's luck and how it extended to his minions, but if this was the kind of 'luck' he was getting... well. All said, the current situation, though strange, wasn't exactly what he would call 'bad'. In fact, if he wasn't just a little bit superstitious (and wasn't everyone?), he could almost call it 'good'.

Almost. Because he had been thinking. Thinking was something he did a lot. It came with being unable to connect with the network and consequently being frequently ignored and forgotten. While people were mindtexting and distracting themselves with image macros and pointless videos, beamed directly into their minds, all he could afford to do was think. So he thought, and he thought a lot. Most of the time, this turned out to be a useful lifeskill. Presently, though, it was seriously interfering with his enjoyment of the moment.

It started off with something stupid, because, of course it did. Being anywhere in the proximity of the Captain eventually led to madness and stupidity. He could pinpoint approximately when this whole thing began, but he still wasn't sure how they got from there to here, 'here' being frenching Pilot on a relatively non-radioactive sofa in an abandoned house during mandated 'Friendship Bonding Time'.

A part of him marvelled that he was capable of carrying on a full internal monologue while his mouth and, indeed, the rest of his body, was busy responding to the very enthusiastic and thorough assault by Pilot upon his being. Then Pilot made that little sound, that little thing between a gasp and a whimper and his thoughts promptly derailed like a jet train.

For the next few minutes, it was just tongue and teeth, the warmth of body against body, hands, sliding, grasping, caressing. His gloves were off, bare fingers sliding under the black leather jacket, seeking and finding bare skin, tracing the curve of a spine that arched to his touch, drawing out more distracting little sounds. With his free hand, he caressed what little of Pilot's face he could get at, considering the man's stalwart refusal to remove anything more than his oxygen mask.

Right, about that. That was...

Pilot leaned into his touch, kissing him desperately, body tensing momentarily before he reached his release, cries muffled in his mouth.

Right, about THAT! Actually, about DEX cyborgs. Ever since this... thing... began, he had been forced to wonder exactly how much of this... everything was actually real? Certainly Pilot seemed to enjoy their... little encounters, becoming more and more frequently the initiator of the happenings during 'Friendship Bonding Time'. It didn't quite sit right with him, though, because he wasn't sure... or rather, from what he had observed, it didn't seem likely that DEX cyborgs were physically capable of experiencing... well. Arousal? Climax? Sex, generally?

But, of course, Pilot was Pilot. Which didn't actually make it better. At which point did one draw the line between casual sex with a co-worker and taking advantage of the mentally impaired? And how much did it matter if said co-worker was technically more robot than human? And what if said robot was deeply and fundamentally (wrongly?) convinced of his humanity?

He'd thought about just asking Pilot directly, about what exactly he was getting out of this not-a-relationship, but there really wasn't a nice way to say it, was there? That and Pilot seemed to be utterly convinced that he was just a normal human being, for some value of normal. Previous attempts at pointing out how obviously he was not were met variously by blank stares, sulking, outright denials or some combination of the above.

Insistent hands were making their way below his belt and his thoughts stuttered to a halt, freeing his mind to deal with the more pressing attempted invasion of his pants.

"Pilot," he managed to get out, mortified at how raw his voice sounded. Green eyes glanced up from behind green goggles, a pink tongue flicking quickly across lustfully swollen lips. Wow, fuck, what was he going to say again? "Not with your gloves on."

Pilot sat back on his heels, pouting, leaving him suddenly bereft of physical contact. As painful as that was, with a tent in his trousers and the object of his desire just a few centimetres away, he really didn't want those gloves, which had come into contact with just about everything in this radioactive post-apocalyptic wasteland, anywhere near his junk. Though they had compromised before with scavenged hand-sanitiser, that had run out quickly once Engie got into it, the damned germaphobe he was. This did, however, present an opportunity that he had been half hoping for.

After all this time, after all they had done, he'd never managed to get Pilot to take off anything more than his mask. Not that he had any particular problem with that, and he definitely didn't want to force Pilot to do anything that he wasn't comfortable with, but he just couldn't help wondering what exactly was under those clothes. Considering that they had long skipped past third-base, it was only reasonable that he would want to see, right? And besides, wasn't it strange that for someone who seemed to get off just from skin-to-skin contact to be so reluctant to take off even one glove to do some touching in return?

"No gloves, then teeth is ok?" asked Pilot, nuzzling his crotch, scattering his thoughts and forestalling his reply. Gloved hands pinned his hips against the sofa as that talented mouth worked on his zipper, and this was why he never seemed to make any progress, trying to puzzle out this not-a-relationship.

The air was almost painfully cold on his heated flesh, but he wasn't left hanging for long, warm lips engulfing the tip, and Pilot doing that thing with his tongue that made him throw his head back, hips jerking against the hands holding him down. Then a few long, slow licks from base to tip, green eyes catching his through their goggles, as if taunting him, that this agonising pace was of his own doing, and that they could have gotten it on much more quickly if he didn't have a thing about not having radioactive and/or potentially toxic material smeared all over his privates. Except that Pilot didn't tease like that, not when they were doing this, and oh god, why weren't they getting on with this?

He had a hand against the back of Pilot's head and it was taking every ounce of his swiftly decreasing willpower not to just pull him down. Instead, he massaged the back of Pilot's neck, that bit of bare skin between his helmet and his jacket, that Pilot seemed to really like, and was rewarded with a demonstration of what one could achieve without a gag reflex.

Eventually, their encounters tended to turn out like this, with Pilot on his knees and with him trying to touch, caress and knead every precious inch of bare skin available to him. It was the most he could give back; it was the most he was allowed to. He would have liked to have given more, but he'd long since realised that some things were simply physically impossible. The anatomy of a DEX, what little he had managed to find out about, didn't exactly lend itself well to such pursuits.

When he was spent, when they were both spent, he pulled Pilot up to kiss him properly one more time. It wasn't something he often did, because he wasn't fond of the taste of himself, but it gave him an opening to slide one thumb under Pilot's left glove, brushing it against the exposed wrist.

They both jumped a bit at the contact, Pilot snatching his hand back as if burnt.

"Whyyyyyy?"

That wasn't skin.

Well, of course. Yes. Only it was one thing to know that Pilot wasn't exactly human, and another to actually feel it. And it was easy to forget, with such human emotion brimming in those green eyes, shock, confusion. Betrayal.

Oh no. No, no, no.

Instantly, one hand was on Pilot's face, stroking, soothing. With his other hand, he reached carefully for Pilot's left hand, waiting until he had the other's permission to move it. Pilot watched him intently, uncertain. Watched him press that hand to his chest, over the spot where he'd been impaled by a katana, then to his lips.

"Can I see?" asked Snippy.

He could see Pilot wavering. Then the fight went out of the DEX and he huffed, dropping his gaze.

"Why?" he whined a little more quietly. "Such useless! Stupid Snippy. See!" With an impatient tug, he whipped off the glove.

No, it wasn't a human hand. Well, it was shaped like one and functioned like one, but was surfaced with what appeared to be circuits rather than the skin (skin-like substance?) that was present on other parts of his body. Not that Snippy noticed, as his attention was entirely focused on the series of rusted metal staples attached to Pilot's left pinkie.

"What the HELL is that?!"

"My pinkie ran away for two weeks," explained Pilot, obviously sulking at having to explain such an obvious thing. "So I staples it so it cannot run away again."

"How long ago was this?!"

A non-commital shrug, but nevermind that, there was no way rusty staples were ok to leave in anybody, DEX or no. He said as much, only to receive a scandalised look.

"But I NEEDS pinkie! What if it RUNS AWAY AGAIN?"

It was so absurd, he wasn't sure how to react to it. "Then we'll go look for it together," he said finally, because thinking about it made his brain hurt. The rest of "Friendship Bonding Time" was spent picking rusted metal staples out of Pilot's hand.


	2. In which Cancer is a poor salesman

A/N: Did I say I was going to write Pilot's POV this chapter? That didn't happen, sorry. Have some Cancer instead.

For the rest of the time, they acted as though "Friendship Bonding Time" was actually hours of card games that made little impact on the bond of their friendship. It wasn't as though it was a big secret or anything, though. There was nothing to feel ashamed about, two consenting adults having a bit of fun in this forsaken world. Unfortunately, Zee Captain had the maturity of a 5-year-old, while Engie had fewer social graces than the murderous AI he invented, so Snippy was glad that neither of them seemed to know. On the downside, this meant that there wasn't anyone he could talk to about his conflicted feelings toward the whole situation.

"LEt uS prOVide hIM witH nEW oRgaNS. HoW AbouT soMe gENetaLIA?" suggested the Biomatrix that dogged his existence and kept him technically sort-of alive. "IT cOUld fAciLitaTE PRoCreAtIOn."

"Bwah?!"

"YoUR RELatiONShIP wiTh thE sEMi-OrGANiC iS uNsaTIsfyINg dUE to laCk oF poSsiBILitY of SExuAL conGResS. WE CAn pRovIDe tHe reQUisITe oRgANs aT yOUr rEquESt. BetTeR reTuRNs on iNVestMEnt iF pRoGEny rESult."

There were so many things wrong with the little unsolicited speech from his scarf that he could only manage a flat "NO."

"FiNE. JuST tRyiNG tO heLP."

"Just trying to acquire more biomass in the form of my hypothetical children, you mean?" he snarked.

"IT wILL eVEntUaLLY cOMe tO pASs," purred the Biomatrix sedately.

He wasn't sure why the thought of it was so unsettling. His... children. Haha. No. Just, no. That was never going to happen, except that he had glimpsed the future through the eyes of one of his descendants, so, yes. Children. Eventually. It made him wonder how many other survivors were still out there, and about the possibility of rebuilding the human race... but if the world remained this fucked up, any speculation was useless. This was no place to raise a child. This world was barely able to sustain the few humans left on it. And for all Zee Captain's talk about bringing Spring back...

No, it was pointless. Some things were not worth thinking about. Some things were too dangerous to think about, too close to the edge of madness to risk brushing up against. So long as he didn't think too much about it, he could hope. And if he could have hope, then there was a tomorrow.

Semi-organic, the scarf had said. "Do you know which parts of him are organic?" he asked, changing tracks as smoothly as a changing gears in a manual car with a broken clutch.

"It wiLL nOt hELp yOU. EsseNTiAL coMpoNEnTs aRe miSsInG."

"No, you're still not adding organs to him."

"HE wOuLD bE a dURAbLe veSseL fOr..."

"No."

The Biomatrix seemed to sigh. "...wE haD hOPeD tO heLP wITh yoUR veXATioN so YOu woULd bE mORE rESpoNSIve tO oUR eXcELLent oFfeRS. AS yOU wILL nOt bE hELpeD bY aNy aNSwer we CAn gIVe, wE hAve deCIdeD to reFUSe to aNSweR yOUr qUEry. ThE mISsiNg esSENtiAL cOMponEnTS aRe fROm hIs bRAin. MisSINg oR daMAGeD, oTHeRWIse nOT foUNd. Rest iS irRELevaNT."

"Wait, what do you mean by that?!"

He spent the next minute or so trying to figure out if it was possible to strangle a scarf before a loud crash drew his attention away from his problems. Life was always full of distractions when living with a bunch of psycho children, after all.


	3. In which a metal rod stars

A/N: This chapter contains non-graphic gore and awkward resulting boners, which really shouldn't go together, but you can blame Pavlov for that.

Outside of their current residence, Pilot had been mucking around with the remains of the latest flying machine he had apparently managed to cobble together. It more resembled a haphazard pile of junk now, having, as far as he could see, somehow imploded within the span of the last few minutes. Excellent! Though that thing had actually worked when it was functional, to his continuing surprise, he was happy to have any excuse to keep his feet as close to the ground as he could, magical life-preserving scarf or otherwise.

He was interrupted in the middle of his mental victory dance by movement in the rubble. Hang on. "Pilot?"

"Snippy? Taxi is hugging me and won't let me go," came the voice from somewhere in the heap.

His heart leapt momentarily into his throat, but Pilot didn't sound any different from his usual perpetually mildly-confused self. That was probably a good sign, he thought as he ran over to help dig his compatriot out. Not that said compatriot seemed to need any, from the way he was pushing broken parts off of himself. Really, it was only a surprise this kind of thing didn't happen more often.

"Snippy?" whined Pilot from where he was still half-buried. "I can't get this out!"

"Well, maybe you shouldn't have been playing on piles of junk," he called back. Or, he wanted to call back, except that he seemed to have temporarily lost his voice from seeing Pilot partially impaled on a metal rod.

It was about two inches in diameter, though it seemed bigger, glistening with some kind of dark fluid, having pierced the struggling man through the right thigh, probably during the collapse. Pilot seemed to have resorted to hitting it in frustration, muttering darkly about how they were't that kind of friends and how such behaviour was inappropriate. From the way he fell, it was impossible for him to lift himself off the rod.

And yet he seemed entirely undisturbed, for some value of 'undisturbed'. Certainly, he seemed to want to get up, and to be in mild distress at being unable to do so, but... didn't that hurt?

What if it didn't? What if DEXes weren't built to feel things like pain? What if DEXes weren't built to feel things other than pain? Was that what the Biomatrix meant?

"Snippyyyyyy, you jiggly shoeeeeee, make Taxi stop!"

Snapping out of his reverie, he all but sprinted over. There was no way he was going to be able to break the rod if Pilot couldn't (his hand wandered to his chest to still the twinge of memory), but fortunately, the rod wasn't exceptionally long and it wouldn't take much work to lift Pilot up and slide him off of it. For a wound of that size, though...

There was blood on the metal rod, and he didn't know why he felt relieved when he should have been worrying about infection and blood poisoning. And probably tetanus. What he did know was that, in a normal human situation, removing the rod, or removing Pilot from the rod, would cause massive bleeding as they would be unplugging a hole, so to speak. Glancing around, he managed to salvage some cloth to tie a makeshift tourniquet around Pilot's right thigh, just in case.

It took a little more effort than he expected, having forgotten how heavy Pilot was in spite of his apparent size. Pilot didn't help by flailing at him about how the tourniquet was too tight and that it hurt, and he found himself laughing because a tourniquet hurt and getting impaled by a two-inch-wide rod didn't?!

"I see mein minions have broken mein flying machine!"

Oh yes, because more madness what exactly what was required right now. Tightening his grip on Pilot so that the crazy Captain-worshipper wouldn't attempt to limp over to offer apologies, Snippy snarked back, "It looks like your flying machine has broken your minion."

"So it has," noted Zee Captain as Pilot squawked indignantly about how Snippy was 'making lies' and how he wasn't broken. As this was accompanied by much flailing, the end result was the both of them taking a bit of a tumble and landing at Zee Captain's feet.

"NOT BROKEN!" declared Pilot, clambering into an upright position. It lasted all of two seconds before his injured leg buckled, dropping him onto Snippy, who was just beginning to get up.

He didn't remember signing up for slapstick.

Zee Captain bent over the hole in Pilot's leg, examining it. From his vantage point of somewhat under Pilot, Snippy could see that the wound wasn't bleeding as badly as he had expected. In fact, he wasn't quite sure how much of the darkish fluid oozing from it was actually blood: his goggles weren't built to preserve colour fidelity. If he stared and avoided blinking, he could have sworn that there were pinpricks of blue light flickering throughout the wound.

Pilot seemed to struck speechless by the proximity of his beloved Captain, quietening down and remaining quite still as the Captain traced the perimeter of the wound with one gloved hand. Gloved hands that could have had been anywhere and really had no place anywhere near gaping wounds. Snippy would have protested, because germs! Dirt! Infection! Radiation!, but then Pilot made that little sound, that sound that he had recently been intimately acquainted with.

...

...

...

...

...REALLY?

He wasn't sure which was worse, that he had an eye-level view of Zee Captain poking at Pilot's wound while Pilot made suspiciously sexual noises, or that he was now nursing a semi because of it. Stupid Pavlovian reactions.

"This needs to be patched right now! I cannot have HOLES in mein minions!" proclaimed Zee Captain loudly, having evidently completed his investigation.

Snippy grimaced at the volume. He may have long gotten used to getting yelled at but it didn't mean that he was ever going to learn to like it, unlike Pilot, who would usually be stirred to such heights of excitement that he yelled right back like some over-enthusiastic puppy. Not today, though. He seemed not to have gotten his voice back yet.

With Zee Captain floating off to examine the remains of the flying machine, Snippy helped Pilot back onto his feet and steered him towards the inside of their current residence. He had some first aid supplies squirrelled away in his pack somewhere, and indoor air quality tended to be a little bit better than outdoors, making it a better place to treat wounds. Pilot, for his part, remained strangely subdued, clinging onto him for support and allowing himself to be led. Was it the adrenaline wearing off? Did DEXes even have or respond to adrenaline?

When they arrived at his room, by which he meant the room he had temporarily claimed for sleeping in, where his supplies were, Pilot turned and attacked him, tugging his respirator aside and kissing him like a drowning man gasping for air.


	4. In which Snippy checks for head injuries

A/N: Dear nady-spier, I blame you directly for how this story spontaneously developed some kind of plot. I hope you'll enjoy it, though. Warnings for this chapter, not much. Pilot's still wounded, they're both kinda idiots. Did I end up writing hurt/comfort? Seriously?

It was so hard to pull away when Pilot had one hand curled around his neck and the other curled between his legs, fondling him through his pants. They had to come up for air some time, though, and when they did, he took the opportunity to remove Pilot from his person, with a little more violence that he had been expecting, sending the injured man crashing, fortunately, onto the sofa.

"The words in my eyes say I need to take off your leg scarf," said Pilot absently after a moment, picking at the tourniquet. "I don't want to explode."

What the hell was that all about?! Snippy took a deep breath, choked, replaced his respirator and took a couple more. He thought they had an arrangement, that things like that were reserved for when they were sure they were alone, not in the area of their residence! Then again... who knew what was going on in Pilot's twisted little mind? Maybe he was overreacting. Maybe Pilot simply didn't realise this wasn't Friendshp Bonding Time. Maybe the fall addled his brains (some more).

Right. Right. They were here to disinfect and patch that wound. Leaving Pilot on the sofa for now, he dug for his non-radioactive salvaged first aid supplies. Purified water, 70% alcohol, for cleaning out the wound. He had some bandages and gauze for the final wrapping, but for a wound that size, they probably needed to find some way to close it up. Perhaps staples would work, he thought wryly to himself, recalling the patch job Pilot had carried out on his finger.

By the time he finished gathering the supplies, Pilot had managed to remove the tourniquet with no apparent ill effect. Still, he seemed a little tense, slouching on the sofa, pointedly looking away from the hole in his thigh. Which was glowing. But not in a radioactive way, said the Geiger counter, much to Snippy's relief.

A closer look at the wound showed that it wasn't as bad as it had seemed outside. To be more precise, it seemed to have gotten substantially better already. Some kind of DEX repair mechanism, perhaps? That would explain some things, like how Pilot seemed pretty much immune to any form of damage that one would imagine he would have sustained, being the flaily psycho man-child he was, living in a post apocalyptic world with absolutely no OSHA compliance.

When he reached out to check the remaining extent of the injury however, Pilot grabbed his hand, distress written all over his partially uncovered face. It was worrying how quiet the usually hyperactive man was being, and how little he seemed to care that his face covering was still off when he usually preferred to be all covered up.

On the other hand... well. It wasn't often he had a chance to stop and stare at Pilot's face, however much of it was visible. They were usually too busy eating, food or each other's faces, for prolonged contemplation of facial features when the opportunity arose. He didn't have too many words to describe faces, especially faces that he enjoyed, what with the exhorbitant prices of everything from a break to feelings of love back before the apocalypse, but he did know what he liked, and he liked what he was seeing.

"Snippy, I feel strange," said Pilot, nuzzling his hand.

"You don't say," muttered Snippy, trying to decide if this was somewhere within the range of normal(ish) Pilot behaviour, or if it was the result of environmental toxins entering his body through the wound, or... hm. "Pilot, did you bump your head just now?" He'd been so fixated on the obvious injury that he'd forgotten to check for non-visible ones. A head injury would explain abnormal behaviour. Well, more-abnormal-than-usual behaviour.

Pilot shook his head vigorously. "Can we have benefits now?" he asked, tugging at Snippy's respirator again.

"Bwah?" No, something was definitely wrong. Grabbing both of Pilot's hands, he pinned them to the sofa. "Pilot, sit still and let me check you over or I'll tell Captain that you don't want to be fixed."

Something akin to terror crossed those green eyes and he thought, hah, got him! Then Pilot kicked him in the chest halfway across the room.

"Stupid SNIPPY-SHOE! No, you're not EVEN A SHOE you're A SANDAL! A STINKY SANDAL! And not a pair! JUST ONE! A-A HOBO SANDAL!"

He could have sworn he'd cracked a rib or two, except that his scarf hadn't started making him offers yet. It had been awhile since he'd experienced such violence from Pilot, not since the ANNET zombie incident, and definitely not since the man had declared them 'friends'. Friends or not, he was very much unamused at the abuse. How tempting it was to just storm out and leave Pilot to sort himself out! Only...

Pilot had curled up on the sofa, whispering something to himself over and over again.

"I'm human, I'm human, I'm human, I'm human, I'm human, I'm human, I'm human, I'm human..."

"If you were, you'd be dead," Snippy snarked, massaging his ribs.

"SHUT UP, SNIPPY, YOU'LL RUIN IT! No no no no no no, Snippy is a shoe. Shoes can't THINK! He can't make me not human, he can't CONCEPTUALISE me as a MACHINE. If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? I'm human. I'm human, I'm human, I'm human..."

This... this actually sounded pretty bad. Picking himself off the floor, he managed about two steps before he was tackled and knocked back down again. It seemed that Pilot had thought he was leaving.

"Please don't tell Captain!"

He wasn't really in any state to tell anyone anything, being 90% sure that he'd just broken something, but his pained silence just seemed to invite Pilot to lean over him anxiously. "Snippy, we are friends, right?"

"Are you sure you didn't hit your head?" he managed to get out, though he might as well not have spoken as Pilot continued to ramble on.

"I'm human, you know. I don't want to be a shoe. Don't make me a shoe. I sorry I called Snippy a hobo sandal. Snippy is my friend. We have benefits. I like benefits. I'm human. I'm human. Snippy, I don't want to be not-human, don't make me."

"...how can I possibly make you?"

"Because conceptualisation," replied Pilot, as if it explained everything.

Yea... no. "...take off your helmet."

"NO."

Snippy thought about it quickly. "If you are human, you may have bumped your head and I need to check you're not hurt. If you are a robot, then it wouldn't hurt you, so you dont't need to take your helmet off for me to check. So which are you?"

Pilot stared at him for a long while, wavering. "UNFAIR!" he cried.

"What are you, Pilot?"

"'mhuman," mumbled Pilot forlornly, climbing off him and sitting down beside him instead, knees tucked up to his chest. "B—but don't look! I take off helmet, then Snippy look, ok?"

That went surprisingly well. He wondered how far he could push it, if he could insist on looking anyway to see what on earth Pilot was trying to hide, but the green-eyed man seemed so distraught that... hngh. He was just too nice, way too nice for his own good.

When he turned back, Pilot had huddled into a ball, face in his knees, a shock of blond hair the only part of his head visible. He might have guessed: blond jokes did have some basis in reality after all. It made him wonder if Zee Captain blond too, underneath his mask, because that would explain so much. Snippy grinned wryly behind his respirator before sobering up a bit and starting on the checks he'd promised.

No cuts, no blood, no open wounds. That was a good start. Slipping off one glove, he slid his bare hand into the blond hair, feeling the scalp underneath for any bumps or bruises. Almost immediately, Pilot twitched, whimpering. "Did that hurt?"

A small shake of the head. No? He felt around a bit more, but there was no sign of any swelling or tenderness, or anything out of the ordinary. Pilot was starting to fidget, though, so he thought he would try to distract the man a bit.

"Why don't you want me to see your face?"

A pause, a flinch, then, "A pineapple took my face."

"A... pineapple?"

"There was a pineapple, and then it was bright, and then it was dark."

That sounded like a bomb, actually. A bomb that looked like a pineapple? Perhaps a grenade? Unless it was a literal pineapple bomb, along the lines of the temporal fruit bombs, but that was more of a resistance thing than a military thing.

He was more curious now than ever, and he briefly regretted asking the question. Pilot seemed to be shivering now. Pilot, who was presently wearing none of his usual face coverings. And all Snippy had to do was to give his hair a tug, then he would finally be able to see Pilot's face.

But he wasn't that kind of guy. Damn it.

Instead, he spent the next few moments stroking Pilot's hair, absently trying to soothe the tremors away. It didn't seem to be working, though. Maybe the leg wound was still bothering him? Or maybe... Experimentally, he ran his fingers through Pilot's hair, massaging his scalp, trailing them down to the nape of his neck where he finished with a little kiss.

"Unfair," protested Pilot weakly when he had come down from his peak, and Snippy wondered if he's gone a little bit too far. "I want to touch too." Oh. Guess not.

As fun as a little reciprocation sounded (he licked his lips, thought about Pilot licking his lips, then had to adjust his pants), this wasn't really the time or place for it, and he had gotten very distracted from the original reason they had come to his room in the first place.

"Let me look at your leg first."

And there was that hesitation again.

"If you are human, that really needs to be bandaged" he offered.

Finally, finally, Pilot uncurled himself, presenting his injured leg, hands still hiding his face, and Snippy got to work.


	5. In which a violin leads to pain

A/N: I swear I didn't mean for it to turn out this way. Warnings: angst, non-consensual tampering of the mind, poorly researched command prompts.

Something unbroke inside of his head when his blue tiara broke again. Since then, he had become good friends with Snippy. Friends with benefits. Lots of benefits. He liked benefits.

And he liked Snippy, more than he'd expected. Snippy was nice, even though Snippy liked to call him a machine when he was unhappy with something he'd done. He wasn't a machine! He was human! Even if there were parts of him that didn't look or feel correct, he was still human! He wished he could explain why it was so important to Snippy, because he knew that Snippy would stop calling him a robot if he knew, but he couldn't even think straight about it himself, going around and around and around in circles.

He was human. There was no need to explain why he wasn't a robot because he was human. He couldn't possibly be a robot because he was human.

He didn't need to think about all this when Snippy was kissing him, because Snippy knew when he was kissing him that he was definitely human. Machines couldn't make out. That's why it felt so good when Snippy kissed him. Because he was human. He could feel good because he was human. That was just how humans worked.

Touch felt good. Kissing and touching would naturally lead to a crescendo of good feelings. He'd seen the videos. That was just how humans worked.

There were some things that he couldn't do, but that didn't make him not human. He had been worried at first, but Snippy told him that it was ok, that just because it could be done didn't mean it had to be done, and that people didn't always do everything anyway. And besides, what he could do, he could do very, very well. He knew he could do it very, very well, because he could make Snippy feel so good that he forgot to be polite, and Snippy was always nice and polite when they were having bonding times.

He wished he could do more, he wished he could give more, but his hands were wrong, and his body was wrong and he couldn't begin think about how to explain why he couldn't. He just needed Snippy to know that he was human. He just needed to know that Snippy knew that he was human.

Because he was human.

Because he was human, when Zee Captain touched him, it felt good. It felt so good, but he didn't. It felt amazing, but he just felt a little bit sick instead. He wished he hadn't felt it, and he wanted it to go away, but it was part of being human too, feeling things you didn't want to feel. He wanted Snippy to make it go away, the uncomfortable feeling, but he couldn't make Snippy understand because he really didn't understand it either. All he knew was that Snippy felt right, and Snippy made him feel right and made him so angry because he couldn't, he couldn't... he couldn't, something inside him was still broken and he couldn't.

He wished he wasn't so wrong. He wished that Snippy wouldn't say 'if' he was human. He was human; it wasn't an 'if'. He wished he could just turn around and kiss him, and not have to put on his helmet and his goggles first because his face was wrong and he couldn't let Snippy see because he wasn't not human and he was thinking in circles again.

At least his leg was being cooperative now. He hated it when body parts didn't cooperate. Didn't they know how hard it was to coordinate everything if there was no coordination? This was what teamwork was all about! They had to learn to be a better team. But the strength of a team depends on the leader says the cat, and he knew that he wasn't as good a leader as Zee Captain, who was the bestest most awesomest leader in the world, so he had a long way to go before he could expect full compliance from his parts.

Zee Captain and Snippy were somewhere out there beneath the pale light of the irradiated sky. Were they thinking of him, whom they'd left behind?

He hadn't been given any objectives other than to make sure that he was in working condition again ASAP, Zee Captain wasn't around to refresh his orders, Snippy wasn't around to distract him and Mr Kittyhawk remained a traitor :(, so he didn't have much to do. Well, maybe he could go talk to Engie, except that Engie was a useless fool who was sometimes a vegetable. But since he didn't dislike vegetables, he hobbled and hopped around the residence looking for Engie.

Instead of Engie, though, he found a violin, which he started looking for part way through his search for Engie because there were pictures on the walls of musical instruments and the voices in his head were starting to sing and he would like them to be quiet please and for that he needed music without words so he had to find some instrument because the voices were so distracting.

He didn't realise it was a magical Engie-summoning violin. It did make Engie say weird things that he couldn't understand for awhile, but maybe they were magic words to go with the magic violin? Intrigued, he bowed the strings until Engie grabbed his hands to stop him.

"Don't ever do that again! I thought some creature had gotten into the house and was going to kill us all!"

Pilot cocked his head at the agitated Engie. "Is ok, the magic violin only summons Engie and not monsters," he explained matter-of-factly, congratulating his brain on making it up on the spot. "Monsters don't like music."

"Music? That wasn't music. This thing isn't even tuned!"

Oh. So it wasn't. No wonder it didn't sound like a violin! Retrieving his hands from Engie, he fiddled with the strings until the lengths and tightness looked correct for the correct resonances, according to the words in his eyes, then played some concordent notes together.

"I didn't know you could play," said Engie finally, after the notes died back down into silence, not shouting anymore.

Pilot was vaguely disappointed that more magic didn't happen. "I just vibrate the strings that are set up to resonate at pleasing frequencies."

"...what are you, exactly? I thought that Charles was just joking that you were a robot but..."

Pilot bristled. "I'm human!"

"R:/HOSTNAME"

" _h_is_p_r_ Pi _ : _ _i_ _ " He hadn't said that. It was his voice but he hadn't said that. Oh no! The magical violin gave Engie magical powers! "Engie! You must use your powers for good and not for evil!"

Engie ignored him in favour of muttering to himself about corrupted data before seeming to come to a decision. "R:/CHECKDISK"

Pilot blinked 'no'.

"R:/ADMIN CONTROL: CHECKDISK"

Something inside of his head snapped and light exploded in his eyes, words scrolling faster than he could process, even if he were paying attention. As it were, he was too busy screaming.


End file.
